


i remember tears streaming down your face when i said i’ll never let you go.

by LLReid



Series: kamilah’s forever. [7]
Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novels)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon LGBTQ Male Character, F/F, Family Bonding, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Friendship, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, LGBTQ Themes, Light Dom/sub, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Same-Sex Marriage, Teen Angst, Teenagers, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Vampires, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28823559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Inspired by; Safe & Sound by William Joseph.~~~~“Well?,” Kamilah prodded as she stared down their sulking teenage daughter across the kitchen island. “Is what your teacher said when she called me true or not?”“That depends entirely on what she told you,” Zahra mumbled, snapping more than she’d initially intended to as she crossed her arms over her chest, mirroring Kamilah’s stance. In a last ditch effort to sound less stroppy she added, “There are two sides to every story, mama, and the dumb bitch made damn sure to make herself sound innocent when that wasn’t the case at all.”“Is it true you yelled at her?,” Anastasia sighed.Zahra nodded. “Yup.”“You called her a bitch?,” Kamilah added.“Pretty much.”She raised an eyebrow. “You said you’d send every vampire in New York City to drain her dry?”“Not in those exact words, but yeah... that was the gist.”“You also told her you’d mess around in her mind until she believed that she was the zebra from the Madagascar movies?,” said Anastasia.
Relationships: Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Sayeed, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Series: kamilah’s forever. [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108751
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	i remember tears streaming down your face when i said i’ll never let you go.

“Well?,” Kamilah prodded as she stared down their sulking teenage daughter across the kitchen island. “Is what your teacher said when she called me true or not?”

“That depends entirely on what she told you,” Zahra mumbled, snapping more than she’d initially intended to as she crossed her arms over her chest, mirroring Kamilah’s stance. In a last ditch effort to sound less stroppy she added, “There are two sides to every story, mama, and the dumb bitch made damn sure to make herself sound innocent when that wasn’t the case at all.”

“Is it true you yelled at her?,” Anastasia sighed.

Zahra nodded. “Yup.”

“You called her a bitch?,” Kamilah added.

“Pretty much.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You said you’d send every vampire in New York City to drain her dry?”

“Not in those exact words, but yeah... that was the gist.”

“You also told her you’d mess around in her mind until she believed that she was the zebra from the Madagascar movies?,” said Anastasia.

“The zebra’s name is Marty.” Zahra’s eyes widened and she cleared her throat, “I mean— yeah. Yeah, I did say that and I’m not sorry. She was misgendering my friend Adam and he started crying. I wasn’t actually gonna play around inside her head because I know Jax and I promised you that we’d never do that unless we were in danger— I just wanted to scare her because she wasn’t listening when the whole class kept correcting her when she used Adam’s dead name and tried to make him use the wrong locker room.”

She sighed and pulled the bag of gummy bears she’d been working on devouring from her pocket when she’d received the phone call. “Have a gummy bear.”

Their fourteen year old’s brow furrowed as she slowly reached across the counter and took the candy. “You’re not gonna start yelling at me like that other kid’s parents started yelling at him for standing up for Adam the second they’d left the office?”

“Have we ever yelled at you like that?,” Anastasia asked softly.

Zahra shook her head. “I mean, no, but I’ve never gotten in enough trouble that you were both called in from work and I was sent home for the rest of the day before. Is the yelling and the parents generally being dicks not part of getting in trouble?”

“Let me ask you this: do you think you deserved to be yelled at?” Anastasia raised a brow as Zahra shook her head. “Do you think yelling at you will serve any other purpose besides us taking our frustration at having our days interrupted out on you?” Zahra shook her head again. “Right, exactly. So what would be the point when all it will do is make the situation worse and damage our relationship?,” Anastasia continued. “We’re going to sit down and we’re going to have a conversation about this, alright? You don’t have to worry we’re going to start going crazy on you like that other boy’s parents did, we have more respect for you than that and we genuinely want to hear your side of the story.”

Zahra visibly relaxed and nodded her head, and Kamilah led the way as the three of them headed out into the garden where they could really talk about what had happened comfortably. 

Nobody with a brain or an ounce of compassion would deny that Zahra was right in standing up for her friend when an older adult started mistreating him. Kamilah was, quite frankly, ready to stab the damn mortal substitute teacher who’d caused the whole thing... and had her wife not arrived at the principal’s office before her she very likely would’ve snapped and killed the fool. Even by mortal standards, the woman was batshit.

“Start at the beginning,” Kamilah said as she took a seat at the outdoor table beside her freshly planted peonies. “We’ve already had to listen to that mewling mortal’s side of the story and your principal’s dramatic retelling. Now we want yours.”

“Mom, can’t you just look into my mind and project my memory of it?,” Zahra sighed.

Anastasia shook her head. “I could but I’m not going to. We’re trusting you to be honest about what happened on your own.”

Their daughter nodded and smiled gratefully before taking a sip out of the white Hydroflask with her name printed on it in black letters that she took to school on a daily basis. “Third period is gym and we went as normal but found out that Mr. Kowalski is out this week because he has jury duty. This substitute teacher was asking everybody’s names as we were walking into the locker rooms and when she saw that Adam’s name hasn’t been changed on the register yet, she just flipped.”

“She just flipped?,” Kamilah echoed.

Zahra nodded. “She started calling him Ashley and when he told her that wasn’t his name and that he’d been using the boys locker room all semester, she would just say it louder as she tried to make him go into the girl’s locker room. Adam is really shy and he doesn’t like confrontation and he just started crying and, like, begging her to stop or let him change in the bathroom instead and she wouldn’t. Then a few of the guys he plays with on the football team started calling her a bitch and defending Adam, who at this point was basically hyperventilating and clinging to me because he was so upset.”

Zahra paused and took another drink.

“Then I just decided to put a stop to it,” she said, looking away from them towards the dolphin float that was drifting across the surface of the pool. “I got so mad my eyes turned red and I flashed my fangs at her. I called her a dumb bigoted bitch and said that if she ever treated anybody else like that I would be her worse nightmare... and I might’ve said that I’d tell all my vampire friends about what she did too. Then I said the thing about the zebra but that was mainly to make Adam laugh because that’s his favourite movie and we had to talk him out of naming himself Marty when he was deciding what his real name was— and I quoted a few Rose The Hat lines from Doctor Sleep, too, just to be extra threatening, you know? I’m not good at being scary because I’m literally 5’2’’ so I had to, like, create a whole character and just go with it.”

“And did it?,” Anastasia asked. “Did it make him laugh?”

Zahra smiled and nodded. “It made everybody laugh and start cheering, and that was what eventually got her to walk away and leave Adam alone. Then the principal came like five minutes later to take me, Adam, and the football players who’d yelled at her to the office.” She twirled the end of her long ponytail around her hand and sighed. “Like, it’s one thing to be so dumb that you’re mean to anybody who isn’t cis, straight, and white, but it’s a whole other thing for a woman on the verge of retirement to be so cruel to a kid who was just trying to change so he could play dodgeball. I wasn’t just gonna stand there and do nothing when one of my best friends was being treated that way.”

She and Anastasia locked eyes and shared an entire wordless conversation in the arch of their eyebrows and flutter of their lashes.

“And it only made the teachers more mad when I refused to apologise and told them that you guys say that Jax and I don’t have to respect our elders unless they deserve our respect — and I told them that you two would never offer a hollow apology to somebody who didn’t deserve it, and I said I wasn’t gonna do it either.” Zahra drummed her fingernails against the table. “Then they were like, ‘we’ll call your moms if you don’t apologise’, and I just told them to call you guys at that point because I knew I’d either end up stabbing someone in the eyes with a number two pencil or throwing a stapler at somebody’s head otherwise.”

“You did the right thing,” Kamilah concluded. “In standing up for your friend and in refusing to apologise for it. Your teachers being older than you does not automatically make them right or worthy of your respect.”

Anastasia nodded in agreement. “You did good— and you’re right, we both would’ve done the exact same thing.”

Zahra sighed in relief. “Really?”

“Indeed,” she nodded. “That, however, does not mean that you can employ that attitude when other disagreements with your teachers occur. But in this situation it was exactly the most sensible thing to do that speaks volumes of your personal integrity. Mom and I are both very proud of you.”

Zahra smiled and nodded again, absorbing their every word. 

“There are another four hours left that you should’ve been in school,” Anastasia said, “so for that time we want you to work on whatever homework you have to do and study, alright? We were planning on meeting for lunch at Nobu later today, so you can join us.”

“Okay,” beamed Zahra as she stood up. “Uh, is it alright if I FaceTime with Adam to make sure he’s alright before I start? He was really upset and I know that even though his parents accept him and try to understand him, he doesn’t have the type of relationship I have with you guys where he’d feel comfortable being open about everything he’s thinking or feeling.” She fiddled with her phone. “I think he might need a friend right now.”

“Of course,” Anastasia nodded.

“If his parents say it’s okay, you can ask him to join us at lunch if you’d like,” Kamilah suggested. “The reservation is at one.”

A huge smile spread across Zahra’s face and she nodded enthusiastically. “Thank you, you guys are the best! He loves Nobu, so I think that will definitely take his mind off of things at least a little bit.”

Without another word, Zahra ran off back inside and Kamilah slumped against the back of her chair.

“That’s all you, by the way,” she said to Anastasia as she stuffed a few gummy bears into her mouth. “The temper and flare for dramatics may be all me but that soul deep need to stand up for what is right and how loyal she is to her friends— those are two of your best qualities that I’m quite glad she’s inherited.”

Anastasia reached out and gave her thigh a squeeze. “I think there’s far more of you in there than you care to admit.”

She chuckled and shook her head, breathing in deep the fresh floral scent of the garden. Any irritation she’d felt at having her work schedule interrupted had long since dissipated, as all she felt now was a great sense of pride in the person she and her wife had raised.

They’d promised one another when Anastasia was pregnant that they’d do whatever it took to raise their children to be good people. To allow them to be exactly who they were without reprimanding or belittling them when they expressed themselves or voiced their opinions. To both teach and allow them to be strong. To allow them to experience life on their own terms. To mould them to be better people than they were. To teach them to believe in themselves.

To learn that they’d actually succeeded was a wonderful thing.

She cupped the back of Anastasia’s head and drew her into a kiss.

“I think we handled that well,” Anastasia smiled into the kiss. 

“Indeed.” She pressed a playful kiss on the bridge of her nose and then sat back in her seat, twinging her fingers through Anastasia’s. “Definitely better than the mortal parents who’d also been called to the meeting and seemed so concerned with ensuring their children wouldn’t be expelled that they wouldn’t even hear their sons explain.”

Anastasia let out an amused puff of air. “You waltzing into the office without knocking with at least three or four of your assistants sprinting to keep up with you might’ve just been one of the best moments of my life. I mean... the power... the domme energy.”

“Why, thank you,” she teased, “I do try to ensure my lady is adequately aroused at all times.”

Anastasia pouted playfully. “I never said I was aroused.”

“You didn’t have to, darling.” She bit down on her bottom lip as she smiled at her, her dark eyes burning as Anastasia’s cheeks flushed a deep shade of pink. “Seeing me get angry at other people does things to you, doesn’t it?”

“Okay, I’m not even gonna play coy here at all, because when the principal threatened to have her suspended and you just kept antagonising him because you knew he was full of shit... my mouth might’ve went dry.” She giggled softly. “And when you called him a mewling mortal— ah, the memories!”

She huffed and rolled her eyes. “Are you ever going to let that go?”

Anastasia smirked wickedly at her. “Never.”

“You actually take pride in tormenting me, don’t you, woman?,” she chuckled in disbelief. “The audacity— it’s just astounding!”

“You married me,” smiled Anastasia as she wiggled her fingers in her face, the diamonds of her wedding set glinting wildly, “which means you have to put up with me being an uncontrollable brat forever.”

“Oh no,” she gasped, feigning as much shock as she was capable of. “Whatever will I do? Besides, perhaps, chain you up a few hundred thousand times and torture the brattiness right out of you?”

Anastasia’s brows shot up and she nodded her head slowly, her lips quivering as she tried and failed not to break into a toothy grin. “That would work. Chain me up. Whip me. Hell, even choke me until I start getting dizzy... or until I pass out and suffocate a little if you’re feeling extra adventurous. Reassert your dominance— yup, I think I’d be far more inclined to behave myself after that.”

She chuckled and drew her wife into a tight embrace, one of her hands caressing the back of her head and the other gently stroking the length of her back. “All jokes aside,” she murmured into her hair, “I am seriously very proud of you. What Zahra did today, she really did learn that from you... and I know because I learned it from you, too.”

Anastasia looked up and caressed her cheek, smiling softly at her. “We’re not too shabby at this whole parenting thing, you know.”

She beamed back at her. “Not too shabby at all.”

~~~~

“Zahra!,” Jax shrieked as a means of announcing his presence as the elevator doors opened and he skated into the penthouse on his newest skateboard, his overflowing backpack covered in vintage band pins and iron-on patches slung sloppily over one of his shoulders. “What the fuck? Do you throw your phone across The Atlantic after sending one text, I need details! Everybody at school is talking about what happened and— hi, Adam!”

Zahra and her friend both started laughing from their seats at the dining room table, where they’d been brainstorming a project for the upcoming science fair since lunch with Anastasia’s help.

“Hey,” the mortal boy laughed as Jax caught Kamilah’s eyes and recognised her distinctly unamused glare before sheepishly stepping off of the skateboard.

“Hello to you, too, son,” Kamilah teased from her position at the table where she was answering emails. “Nice to see that you recall my displeasure with you skateboarding in the house.”

“Mothers,” Jax beamed as he bowed dramatically at the waist and flashed them a cheeky smirk. As he did so, the thick hair that had grown to below his shoulders that he was growing out to donate to Locks Of Love with a few friends flopped into his face and got into his mouth. “Uncle Adrian said ponytails were all the rage in the eyes of the classiest gentlemen during the revolutionary era,” he laughed as he tried to brush it all out of his line of vision. “I might need to borrow a scrunchy.”

“We have a lot of different accessories you can choose from,” Anastasia laughed. “How was your day?”

“My day was awesome! I passed three tests with A’s. Painted a shitty picture of a leaf in art class. Started learning how to play Bohemian Rhapsody on the piano. Almost set myself on fire with a bunsen burner in Chemistry. Ate pizza for lunch— and everybody and their grandma is saying my sister made that mortal shit her pants and that you guys yelled at Principal Mendez for being an asshole so much that he cried—“

“Ew,” Zahra scoffed. “All I did was call her out for being a bitch. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“It was a big deal,” Adam said softly as he petted the two cats that had been slinking around the table all afternoon. “You and the guys from the team who defended me are the few popular kids who are nice to everybody and actually correct people when they get other kids’ pronouns wrong. You didn’t care that you’d get in trouble, you were just... there for me. It’s a bigger deal than you think.”

Zahra’s cheeks flushed pink and she smiled. “I’ll threaten to unleash the wrath of the council of New York and channel my best Rose The Hat for you any time, bruh. What are friends for?”

“Rose The Hat?,” Jax snorted as his cat, Loki, wandered into his arms to greet him. “My biggest regret in my entire fourteen years of life is picking geometry instead of being in the same gym class as you!”

“Rebecca Ferguson would’ve been proud of her imitation,” Adam confirmed. “She did the whole ‘Well, hi there’ line exactly like she did in the movie before she went off on her. It was brilliant.”

The three teenagers started laughing.

“Do you guys wanna go swimming?,” Jax asked. “I have trunks you could borrow, Adam.”

Zahra glanced between her and Anastasia expectantly. “Can we go in the pool?”

“Off you go, then,” Kamilah nodded. 

The kids stood up and the mortal boy stopped and smiled sheepishly at her and Anastasia. “Thank you for having me over... and for taking me to lunch. It’s turned the whole day around and I’m feeling much better now.”

“Any time, sweetie,” Anastasia smiled. “Are you joining us for dinner?”

His face lit up and he nodded eagerly. “Yes please. I’d... really like that.”

“Awesome,” nodded Anastasia. “Just let your parents know— We’ll get you guys’ order in a little bit, okay?”

As the three teenagers scurried away to go change the mortal whispered, “I wish my parents were like you guys’ moms.”

“What do you mean?,” Jax asked.

“Your house is just so... comfortable. Your moms, like, listen to you when you talk and you don’t have to filter what you’re saying— like, you both act the exact same way with them as you do at school. You’re really lucky.”

“We know,” Zahra whispered back, her smile evident in her voice. “They’re huge dorks and their attempt at making toast could easily turn into a nuclear bomb, but they really are the best.”

“Yeah,” Jax agreed as the wheels of his skateboard began slowly rolling along the polished dark wooden floors. For someone as intelligent as he was, he really didn’t even try hard at all to hide the fact he was skateboarding inside. “They’re dorky as hell but in the best way, and they’d cut off a man’s head for us if they had to— when mom says you can come over any time, she really means it by the way. If you ever wanna get away from home just come over. They don’t mind us having friends over whenever we want, so long as our chores and our homework are all still done.”

“My own parents mean well,” the mortal said, “but they still treat me like I’m five most of the time... and they didn’t believe I was trans for like three years. I think that’s why I like it over here so much because your moms’ are like, the total opposite, and even though they’re immortal, and really powerful, and stuff, they don’t treat you like you’re idiots.”

“Yeah, they’re really chill,” Jax agreed. “I told them I loved boys for the first time when I was eight at that years Pride parade and they literally got me a t-shirt and the blue flag to wave so that I’d feel included and they were so cool about it. They didn’t tell me I was too young to know or make a big deal... and it was awesome. I still have that t-shirt and don’t plan on ever getting rid of it.”

“My parents have never taken me to Pride,” Adam sighed. “We’re always in The Hamptons in June and they don’t wanna drive back to the city.”

“So are we but our family goes every year,” Zahra said. “Our moms won’t mind if you come with us this summer. It’s us, our moms, Auntie Serafine, Uncle Adrian, Auntie Lily, and then our moms’ assistants who are married and some of their friends sometimes meet up with us and we all hang out as a group— then there’s a huge party at The Shadow Den that goes all night and usually ends with all the kids in the arcade playing games whilst the adults get drunk.”

“For real?,” Adam gasped. “They’d really be alright if I tagged along?”

“Sure,” said Jax. “Every year Auntie Lily paints our faces in whatever design we want and she’ll do yours too— you’ll like her a lot. She’s so fun and she always buys us ice cream while we’re there and teaches us to play really funny pranks on people. It’ll be a really good time.”

At that the bedroom doors both closed and the children’s voices faded.

“Parenting, am I right?,” Anastasia smirked as she raised her hand to give her a high-five.

She snorted and shook her head in bemusement. Out of principle she rolled her eyes and did her best to look exasperated with the gesture, but she reached out and smacked her hand against her wife’s as triumphantly as she could manage. “Parenting,” she nodded. 

“Did you know he still had that t-shirt?”

Kamilah shook her head and smiled softly. “I know the flag is on his bedroom wall but I just naturally assumed since he’s now over six feet tall that the t-shirt would be long gone— and are we really that... dorky?”

Anastasia shifted so that she was sat on her lap and pressed a kiss to her temple. “I hate to break it to you, babe,” she murmured, “but we really are.”

She let out a hearty chuckle and nuzzled her face against her wife’s neck. “This is all your doing, I hope you know. I was once feared the world over.”

“You still are,” giggled Anastasia as she stroked her hair. “The only difference now is that you’re loved by us even more than you’re feared by other people... and the fact that you know that you’re so loved has been really good for you.”

She cupped Anastasia’s cheek and drew her into a kiss. One hand drifted into her loose hair as she responded to each kiss, while the other caught her waist and held her as close to her as she could. How odd it was to think she had once genuinely believed that love made a person weak, weak made a person vulnerable, and vulnerable made a person dead... for she’d truly never felt stronger.

She communicated that in what ways she could without actually voicing it – sweet whimpers of happiness against her wife’s lips and an endless stream of kisses. To be known, to be loved... were wondrous things.

“I like you like this,” Anastasia whispered, pressing her brow to hers as they caught their breath. “This is the way it should be.”

“Mhm?,” she hummed.

“You’re safe and happy in my arms.”

Warmth rose to Kamilah’s cheeks as her blush spread all the way to the tips of her ears. Anastasia knew exactly what she was doing— knew exactly what she was doing to her.

“Kiss me again,” she breathed.

Anastasia smirked at her and strategically unbuttoned one more button on the white blouse that she was wearing than would ever been deemed professional. “Do you not have a meeting that you’re supposed to be downstairs for in... five minutes?”

Her eyes darted frantically between her wife’s face and her cleavage as she weighed her options. She very well could’ve said, to hell with more quality time with Anastasia whilst the kids were going to be occupied for the foreseeable future, and gone downstairs and pretended to listen to the board’s list of complaints. That would’ve certainly been the most responsible thing to do.

However, this was one of those rare times that doing the right thing didn’t feel like the right thing at all. 

“I’m horny,” she declared. No rhymes. No embellishments. “And I intend to take you into our study, bend you over your desk, and whet your appetite for later... darling.”

Anastasia’s cheeks immediately flushed red and she cleared her throat. “Oh, I’m whet, alright.”

She snorted. “With jokes like that, I can’t possibly conclude why our children consider us dorks—“

“Says the woman who keeps an entire candy store’s worth of gummy bears in her pockets with her ancient daggers and collection of poisons at all times,” Anastasia smirked, raising her eyebrow. “And don’t even get me started on the stash in your nightstand beside your bullet vibrator, a blindfold, and handcuffs.”

“You— It— They are a very pleasant snack food!,” she pouted. “And you can tease me about the stash in my nightstand all you want, but they are a critical step in our aftercare routine that helps stave off both topdrop and subdrop. The nightstand is a perfectly practical place to keep them and whilst I don’t deny the fact that I snack on them when I’m supposed to be sleeping, I—“

Anastasia giggled and pressed a fluttery kiss to her nose to placate her before leaning in and kissing her with everything she had. Her mouth mashed against hers just as greedily, tongues tangling, hearts beating wildly against each other. The embrace of her arms tightening around her.

“Stop defending your damn gummy bear addiction and just fuck me already,” Anastasia panted as they broke apart.

She laughed breathily. “You’ll be the death of me.”

~ fin.


End file.
